By Kevin D. Williamson
Friday, January 07, 2022
Democrats are scandalized (or they pretend to be) by the
preeminence of conspiracy-kookery and “hidden agenda” talk from the Right, but
they are utterly deaf to it when it comes from their own camp. I think this is
because they are so used to it. But consider this from Slate today, a Mark Joseph Stern column
headlined:
The Hidden Agenda Behind the Attack
on Vaccine Mandate: Six Republican-appointed justices may use these cases
to seize power from the president and Congress.
A “hidden agenda” leading to an illegitimate “seizure of
power” would be a serious thing. Of course, what the Court is being asked to
decide is whether the Biden administration is exceeding its own constitutional
authority, which is not, let us remember, unlimited. The question of how much
the administration can do to enforce a “law” that has not been passed by
Congress is a legitimate constitutional question. But Stern et al. would have
you believe it is an illegitimate exercise in “hidden agenda” politics, a
judicial coup d’état.
I was pleased to read Stern worrying about unconstrained
judicial policy-making, that “unelected judges” may “strike down any policy
they personally dislike.” Of course, that is exactly what the Supreme Court did
in 1973 in Roe v. Wade, invalidating
the nation’s abortion laws, which were real laws, passed by legislatures, not
administrative innovations. But if the Supreme Court invalidates that act of
judicial supremacy, you can be confident that a thousand thousand columns
at Slate and elsewhere will denounce that as
judicial adventuring and the implementation of a “hidden agenda,” too.
No comments:
Post a Comment